Tuesday, May 1, 2012

The last day going to St. Mary's was a sad day for me. I had a great experience teaching at St. Mary's. Going to St. Mary's and working with the kids was one of the best experiences I've had at SUNY Cortland. For the last day my group and I had the 5th and 6th grade group and came up with modified games involving the game of basketball, since they loved playing basketball. I had a great time at my last day at St. Mary's. It was great playing games with the kids for one last time. Looking back at the first day compared to now, I am definitely not as nervous and more comfortable when going to teach at St. Mary's. All the kids are definitely more comfortable around us too. I know mostly all the kids names now and really loved getting to know each kid and talking to them. I'm going to miss St. Mary's and all the fun we had there. I'm gonna miss all the kids too. I really hope some of the things I've taught the kids, will stick with them their whole lives growing up. That is the best feeling in the world as a physical educator, knowing you've impacted a kids life and knowing that whatever it is they learn from you, that it will help them down the road growing up. That is why i think I love teaching so much. I love the feeling of helping others and watching them succeed in whatever it is I taught them. Even if it's only one kid who I affected then I know i'm doing my job and making a difference with one kid at a time. I hope I've made a difference in the kids lives at St. Mary's because I know they've made a difference in mine.

Going back to St. Mary's after not being there for a couple of weeks was real exciting for me to be back. I was looking forward to seeing all the kids again. The theme of the day was Easter, since the week before Easter had just passed. My group and I was assigned to come up with an opening game and a closing game. My partners in the group did the opening game, so I was going to do the closing game. When we first arrived at St. Mary's all the kids were excited to see us and eager to see what games we had planned for them since we haven't seen them in awhile. I was really excited to teach my ending game since the kids were so excited about playing the games we came up with. Since the theme was Easter, I made and cut out 40 Easter eggs and wrote an activity on each egg and colored each egg. I came up with an Easter egg hunt for the kids as the ending game. I hid all 40 Easter eggs and when the kids found an egg they would have to do the activity that it said on the egg. For example 5 jumping jacks, the kid would have to do 5 jumping jacks. Then after the kids were done finishing the activity they would take the egg and put it in the Easter basket and go look for another egg. This game was a huge success. I couldn't believe how many kids loved the game and how well the game went. Overall this day at Saint Mary's was awesome and went really well.

As a future physical educator, I am going to have to be able to think off the top of my head and be creative when teaching a physical education class. This assignment challenged us to be creative and think off the top of our heads. We had to come up with a music video and pick a song and come up with our own lyrics to the song using one of the chapters we were assigned. I had a great time creating this video and making up a song and rapping. My group and I had a lot of fun making this video. After being done with making our song and video, we were put on the spot in class and had to sing in front of the whole class the song we came up with. I was kind of nervous but it went well. This was nothing compared to what we had to do next. The next week we had to perform our music video in pool side, a place where everyone goes to eat in park center. So basically I was really nervous when it came time to perform this music video and performing in front of the class was a breeze compared to this. We had to perform this music video in front of about forty people who came to watch us because our teacher promoted this event to all the PE majors. After all said and done we did great. Everything went well and we were a big hit. This assignment was a great experience and I had a lot of fun. I think my group and I belong on Broadway after the show we put on for everyone. Our teacher also tapped us performing our music video at pool side. Here is the video of the Gym Class Heroes performing on that day. I hope you like it.

Saturday, April 28, 2012

Today at SUNY Cortland's Exergame lab I got the best of both worlds. I got to play video games while exercising at the same time. This was a great experience going to the Exergame lab. I got to play xbox 360 while at the same time exercising to power the controller I was using. I thought this new technology was awesome. This new technology is a great way to get kids that play video games to be able to exercise and get a work out even if all they want to do is play video games. I hope all this new technology in the Exergame lab really makes a break through in the world today and starts to become popular in kids homes all over the world. This technology can help improve the health of many kids lives growing up and as a future physical education teacher that is the main goal to improve the health and skills of all kids lives.

Also in the Exergame lab I was introduced to different games that are used to increase physical activity for younger kids. These games were used to increase physical activity and to help improve and practice different learning skills. A game that I was introduced to was call Hyper dash. This game had many different ways and variations in which you could play. Another game that I was introduced to was a game like hyper dash except it was with animals and I think it was called Animal dash. One way in which I could modify this game is placing all the toy animals on the floor and have the kids make a big circle around the animals. I'll have one kid start with the toy and have them press the button to start the game. While the kid that started with the toy is searching for the animal he/she has to find, the students on the outside will be doing whatever exercise I shout out while their class mate finds the animal. For example i'll yell jumping jacks and the students will have to do jumping jacks until their class mate finds the right animal. Once that student finds the right animal then he/she passes it off to a random student they pick and now they have to go find the next animal and the other students will be doing another activity that I will call out. This will go on until all the animals are found and the game is over. We would see how fast we found all the animals the first game and try to beat our time game by game.

Sunday, April 8, 2012

Today was a great day at St. Mary's. When my group and I first got to St. Mary's we were expected to have the older kids and was prepared with games to play with them. But as we got into our groups, to our surprise we were unexpectedly assigned to the Pre-K group again. So we went outside because it was a nice day out and the Pre-K class was already outside on the playground. We had nothing prepared for the group and was just going with the flow when we first got into the playground. As soon as I walked into the playground, I joined in the game of tag that the students were already playing. Of course they made me be it every time, even though I would tag someone else.

After tag I sat down at a little table that was at the playground with a student because he was tired from running around from playing tag, and so was I. To my surprise about half the class circled around me and started to have conversations with me. I went around the circle asking the students what there favorite flavor gum was. This got them interacting with each other as well, asking each other what there favorite flavors were. Then I went around the group and asked each student if they had a brother or sister at home and they would all get into these stories about how old there siblings were, what they liked to do with them when there home. I would ask one student if they had a brother and they would tell me yeah and the next student would say me too and start talking to the student I just asked.

They all loved talking to me and it was so easy for me to have a conversation with the students about anything. Then we all went inside and came up with a game for them to play off the top of our heads. This day showed us to be ready for anything and to always think on our toes. At the end of the day I really enjoyed the day and was kind of glad we had the Pre-K class again. It showedme I can think on my feet and easily get along and think like a kid with the students.

Today was a fun day. It was Hawaii theme today and overall it was a great day for getting a lot of experience for teaching. My group and I had the Pre-K group today. We first started out in the Pre-K room and had everything planned out for how our time was going to be used and what activities we were going to do. After they had snack time, I was going to read a book to the class and was already sitting in the chair with the book in my hand waiting for the class to finish up eating. But then to the groups and my surprise, the teacher rounded up the students and told them that they were going into the gym now. This was so unexpected for the group and this caught us off guard. I thought this was great though because in the future any thing can happen when teaching and you have to be ready for whatever comes your way. So we went into the gym and came up with a jungle like game for the students that was related to the Hawaiian theme. All the kids loved it and had a great time. So today I learned you always have to be on your feet when teaching and be prepared for anything.